In recent years, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies have emerged as a fast-growing market. Among the various WLAN technologies, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard is the dominating technology and is frequently used for WLANs.
Client devices within WLANs communicate with access points to obtain access to one or more network resources. Access points are digital devices that may be communicatively coupled to one or more networks (e.g., Internet, an intranet, etc.). Access points may be directly connected to the one or more networks or connected via a controller. An access point, as referred to herein, may include a wireless access point (WAP) that communicates wirelessly with devices using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or related standards and that communicates with a wired network.
A client device that is communicatively coupled to a first access point may switch to a second access point due to a change in location of the client device, failure of the first access point, a better signal strength for the second access point, or for any other reason. The second access point then determines whether or not to grant the client device access to one or more network resources via the second access point.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.